SHILL'S KITCHEN

"Don't miss the new series on Showcase that was too hard for the Americans to watch."

That's the Foxtel spiel for an up-coming series, The Black Donnellys. To drive the point home, as the spruiker says "too hard" there's a clip of Dokey (Peter Greene, Zed from Pulp Fiction) bringing down his axe on a competitor's protestations.

TBD is about an Irish family in Hell's Kitchen and the trouble they have dealing with the aforementioned Dokey, living with the legacy of their murdered father, getting on with each other, and coping with a local Eye-talian "family".

It's not that great.

At 8.7 on the IMDB ratings-o-meter, it emphasizes a long held opinion that there should be a time limit on polls. Say, five years. TV shows, movies and albums should not be polled until five years after the initial rush of publicity has dissipated; until such time as the viewers have had a chance to discover whether something is actually, as opposed to supposedly, any good.

Nevertheless, when a show is sold as "too hard for the Americans to watch" I start to wonder. Maybe it was "too hard" - for NBC. The show contains a lot of swearing and violence so it's a stretch to think it would sit comfortably in the notoriously sensitive American network television schedule.

Still, NBC gave it a reasonable time to bed down before pulling it after 13 episodes.

The Black Donnellys is an American television drama that debuted on NBC on February 26, 2007 and last aired on April 2, 2007. Thereafter, NBC began releasing new episodes weekly on NBC.com until the series was officially cancelled.

On April 2, 2007, NBC announced that the series would be pulled after the April 16 episode. Two days later, however, the show was dropped from NBC's lineup, presumably because of not enough viewers. It was replaced by the series The Real Wedding Crashers.

Replaced by Real Wedding Crashers. Ouch. It would appear the oaf demographic voted with their remotes.

Not that I'm about to can a show because it had a short run on NBC. That would be like canning Far Canal Road because it had a short run on Nine. Had? It will. It's rubbish. Network television both here and in America is based on ratings, not quality.

So let's compare potatoes with potatoes. TBD needs to be held up against the likes of The Sopranos, The Wire, Brotherhood and other crime programs that have come out of the cable channels.

Was the Sopranos "too hard" for the Americans? No. Yet it was very "hard" and had a long run on television. The Wire? Nothing in TBD comes close to the "hard" of Chris and Snoop and The Wire ended up the choicest five seasons in TV history.

TBD didn't have a long run because it wasn't good enough, not because it was "too hard" as the Fox announcer would have us believe.

It's more like Brotherhood. A show that wants to be tough, but despite the odd confronting moment, doesn't quite pull it off.

It tries to pull it off, but ends up trying it on. Director Paul Haggis (Crash) gives it the look, feel and sound of a righteous television event. It's a con. Synthesizers and opera cue your emotions. Close ups draw you into the characters. Such that they are. There is barely a person in the show who I warmed to, who I cared about, who even made me laugh. Perhaps Nicky Cottero (Kirk Acevedo from Band of Brothers) an ambitious Eye-talian. Sepia lighting gives it the Godfather look. Joey Ice Cream's voice-over chases Goodfellas.

Not that it is dreadful. I suppose. I managed to sit through the whole series on DVD. Whether I would have managed that had I been forced to endure it on, say, Nine is another thing.

Comments

[Tony T]

Update! Remiss of me not to include an important reason why I don't much like TBD: it's, like, full of young people.

[Peter]

I watched the first one last night and actually really enjoyed it. But it was a first ep, with a strong story and some cracking characters. We'll see how it sustains that level of storytelling over 12 eps.

I feel sympathy for all the boys, in their various ways. They're all trapped by who they are, and that makes for compelling drama if they get the stories right. But it is tough going to sustain interest in a cast that are basically anti-aspiration - they have no desire to get better, just to keep going.

[dysthymiac]

1. we should never believe anything a TV network tells us

2. "the sopranos made so much money, why don't we arse-up an irish equivalent"

3. re Irish & Italian gangsters: Are there any CofE criminal cliches?

4. Underclass joke - whats the difference between Bog Irish and White Lace Irish?
The white-lace irish take the dishes out of the sink before they piss in it

[Tony T]

Pete: I don't feel sympathy for the boys. In fact, I didn't really warm to them at all. (Go Dees!)

D: No such thing as a CoE criminal. We are all saints, in a non-catholic way.